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IMMANUEL – GOD WITH US
Genesis 1:1-5
John 1:1-5, 14
December 27, 2009
Mark writes his Gospel and he says, “Let me tell you the story of Jesus. It begins with his baptism and then this amazing three year ministry.” Matthew and Luke come along and they say, “No! It started long before that. His birth is the culmination of centuries of prophecies and miracles. You have to know about his birth, that’s where the story begins.” And then, along comes John; prophetic, revelatory, mystical John. When I think of John I see Sam McWhorter. They both have the beard, and the hair, and the sandals. And when they talk about their passion they are both so far over our heads. If John were here today he and Sam would be huddled at the back of the church, twittering excitedly, “Finally, someone else gets me!” And John says, “If you want to know about Jesus you have to go back to the beginning; the real beginning, Creation!” The Apostle John’s Christmas story begins at the beginning of all things.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There is a lot going on in that sentence. John wants us to make a connection. It is not a coincidence that John’s ‘in the beginning’ is a perfect match to Genesis’ ‘in the beginning’. It is not a coincidence that in Genesis God creates through speaking out loud, and that John calls Jesus – the Word. It is not a coincidence that in Genesis the first act of Creation is light, and that John calls Jesus the light. John’s very first sentence is intentionally a ‘Boom!’ right in your face; do I have your attention yet? Good! Let’s talk about Jesus.
“In the beginning…” both in Genesis and in John that phrase can also be interpreted as ‘Before God began creating’. You see, here is something that is really hard for me to comprehend – Pre-Eternal. God has always been. There has never been a time that God was not. I can totally understand that I was born, I will live out my life, I will suffer a physical death, and then I will continue to live eternally with Jesus in Heaven. I will always be. What is difficult is trying to understand having always been. You can go back in time, forever, and God already was. God didn’t suddenly pop into being, and then say, “Let there be light”. Because God is pre-eternal, he literally waited an eternity before he spoke Creation into being.
“In the beginning was the Word…”, or ‘Before God began creating, Jesus already was.’ Like God the Father, Jesus is Pre-Eternal. We find evidence of this in the book of Proverbs (8:22-31). Solomon is writing the words of the Messiah and the Christ says:
“"The LORD brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When there were no oceans, I was given birth, when there were no springs abounding with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth, before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.”
John is going to try and answer the question, “What is Jesus?” Nothing like Jesus has ever been before. People want to know, where did he come from, how did he get here, and what is he? John says, “For the answer to that we have to go all the way back to the beginning of Creation. We can’t comprehend Jesus until we get a grip on how everything that is – came to be. John says Jesus is not a creation of God. He was with God when all of the creating began. We read the Nicene Creed this morning. The entire second paragraph of that creed is trying to say exactly that – He was with God when all of the creating began. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…” That word, ‘with’, can be translated as ‘Face to Face’. Jesus is not a creation of God, he is not lesser than God, he is God. He has always been, and he has always been an entity of the triune God. When Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before he is arrested, he says, “Father, give me back the glory that I had when I was with you, before anything else was” (paraphrase of John 17:5).
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” There was a time when theologians tried to make sense of who and what Jesus was, and they came to differing conclusions. Some wanted to say that as God’s Son, Jesus was lesser than God the Father. Some wanted to say that Jesus is not only equal to God the Father, he is God the Father; he’s just the next phase in God’s presentation to mankind. First there was this invisible, but all powerful, God the Father. We needed something more personal. So, God the Father became God the Son and lived with us. But, with a physical body he could only be with some of the people some of the time. So, God the Son became God the Holy Spirit. Now he’s with every believer all the time; one God with three successively different embodiments.
Now, I can see the appeal of that theology. It allows us to say that there is only one God, just as the Old Testament proclaims. Yet, it allows for Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be God without any conflict. It’s nice and neat. John says, “Not a chance. I don’t care how much it messes with your mind, that’s not the way it works. Jesus has always been; he has always been God, and he has always been face to face with God the Father.
Initially, John doesn’t refer to Jesus by name, he calls him the Word. The actual Greek word he uses is Logos. Pretty much everyone will agree that ‘Word’ is a crummy translation of Logos, but it’s better than any of the other crummy translations. It’s the best of the worst. It takes whole sentences, and perhaps paragraphs, to define what Logos means. The Greeks defined it as, “The force, or logic, that brings order and harmony to the universe.” There is chaos and craziness until God speaks, “Jesus”, and then suddenly everything is perfect.
Another defines Logos as, “An expression of personality in communication.” God himself, with all of his perfection, comes when God speaks. To the Hebrews Logos meant the self assertion of the divine personality. I Am, and that’s all I need to say about myself. The definition of Logos I like the best says, “God’s thoughts, his concepts, his intimate desires are made manifest, they become real, because God speaks them into being.” Logos means that what God thinks – is. And, the Apostle John says that all happens through God the Son, Jesus Christ, the Word.
“Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” There are some who believe that what God actually said out loud to spin universes and constellations into being was the name of Jesus, “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth” (Psalm 33:6). The Apostle Paul believes that Jesus is responsible for all of Creation. He writes, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:15-17). By the force of the name of Jesus, everything is.
“In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Genesis tells us that there is no life until God creates light and drives away the darkness. John says that there is no spiritual life until Jesus the light drives away the darkness. This is a big theological statement. Most of us are under the misconception that light and dark are equal opposites. That’s not true. Dark has absolutely no power over, or equality with, light. Take the blackest, darkest, room you can possibly imagine – and put a tiny little candle in the middle of it. The light from that candle overpowers the darkness, and the darkness is helpless to challenge the light. You have never heard of dark putting out light.
Jesus says of himself, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). What Jesus brings drives away evil, and the evil is helpless to challenge Jesus. Do you think the Devil hated Christmas morning? Boy I do. John says, “Before there was anything, before God began creating, there was Jesus; Jesus who was with God, and who is God. By the power of his holy and perfect name everything that is, came into being. And, on the day of his birth evil was vanquished and rendered powerless. This is the Christmas story.
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus became human. The Latin word for this concept is: Incarnate. The Spanish language has roots in Latin, and you may be familiar with the word Carne – which is often translated into English as ‘meat’. But, both Carne and Incarnate literally mean ‘with flesh’. Jesus is God Incarnate; God with flesh. By taking on a human body Jesus became Immanuel – God with us. This was a completely unheard of concept. The first readers of John must have shaken their heads and tried to figure out how this could ever happen.
Augustine, who would have been at home in a three way conversation with John and Sam, once was told that there was no difference between his Jesus and the gods of the Greeks. He wrote back to say, “I have read books by the followers of Plato. In them I found the equivalent statement that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In them I found that all things were made by God, and without him was not anything that was made. In them I also found that in God is life, and that life is the light of men. But, that the Word became flesh and lived among us – that wasn’t anywhere to be found.” In the physical birth of Jesus Christ something amazing, and completely unheard of, was accomplished.
The Apostle John says the Christmas story is so much more than a baby in a manger. It is cosmic, it is Pre-Eternal, it is Logos made Incarnate. The Word, the all-powerful force of Creation which was there when God spoke light into being, has taken on flesh like us. Your tiny little heads will probably never fully grasp the immensity of what has happened. But, don’t doubt – don’t ever doubt. Take my word for it.
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:1-5).
Kenneth L. Barker & John R. Kohlenberger III. Zondervan NIV Bible Commentary, Volume 2: New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 296.